[b]Bishop Edward Salmon, Diocese of South Carolina:[/b]

Let me suggest to you that there is a story in progress, and the story in progress is that the primates of the Anglican Communion will be meeting in Ireland, and they are going to receive the Windsor Report and respond to it. And the work of the American House of Bishops today will be also an ingredient in what they receive. In other words, there were things expected of the American church in the report, and our work today was the level of our response to that report. And in looking at the level of that response, it's different from the English House, who endorsed the report and who talked about moratorium and repentance.

What we said was that we certainly were sorry. I think the word "forgiveness" may be in the document -- I haven't checked. But the facts of the matter are the moratorium is still in the air and something that we will consider when the House of Bishops meets in March. So that will be an ingredient that the primates will consider, that is, the response of the American church to the requests of the Windsor Report, and we did not move to the level that the report asks.

The Windsor Report is not something that you would have a yes or a no to. There were four significant things that they asked of us, and one of the ones that the English House asked specifically was the issue of moratorium, and what we've done is said we will deal with that, but we're not going to deal with it until March. I think the primates will be looking at what we have decided and draw a judgment on it.

[b]Bishop Duncan:[/b]

I think a great number of primates will find this response less, much less than they had hoped for. That is to say, we were asked -- because of the action we took -- we were asked to say we will not do this again. We will not continue with the blessing of the same-sex unions. We will not elect anyone else who is in a partnered same-sex relationship. We will not do that. We will just declare a moratorium at this point.

We were unwilling to do that at this point. We will consider it. But the primates asked for the American church to do it. Had we done it, it would have had a huge impact on how the rest of the world deals with us. But we haven't done it yet. We've said, "No, you talk first, and then we'll talk."

What we frequently do in this church, I think, is we engage a process. The longer the process can be extended, the longer it can go on, the more change you can bring, and the more you can stabilize that change before you really consider we shouldn't have done it by the time it is already de facto what you are doing.

The statement is better than I would have expected. It at least begins with saying we are deeply sorry for the trouble we've caused. But I would have liked very much -- and, in fact, we put forward an alternate agenda, the Bishop of Florida put forward an alternate agenda at the beginning of this, that we're just going to deal with what the report specifically asks for and we are going to attempt to agree to it. That's what we did not do.

[b]Bishop Salmon:[/b]

What did not come out of the meeting was an upfront agreement on a moratorium. That did not come out of the meeting. What came out of the meeting was a statement that we would consider it when we met in March and have had a chance to think about it. But the answer was no at this point.

[b]Bishop Duncan:[/b]

Further, there was a great deal of conversation during the meeting that, as American polity, that is the way the church is ordered. Even if the world wants us to make a moratorium, the way we are set up as a church -- that is, not only bishops but also other clergy, priests, deacons, and laypeople -- we couldn't actually, we shouldn't actually put a moratorium in until our next General Convention, which is in 2006. So there are signals here that while we will talk about it in March again, we may talk about it, but we are not going to really deal with it anytime soon. I hope it will be different from that. I hope the primates will say clearly, "You must deal with it. You must deal with it now."

This profoundly affects church life in some places and in some congregations, many of the congregations that we serve, particularly -- not the congregations in our dioceses. In our dioceses, it's clear where we stand. There are ten [Anglican Communion] network dioceses where our bishops were very clear here. Those congregations know there will be no same-sex blessings; they know there will be no ordination of folks in partnered relationships. Again, those issues are just symptomatic of the biblical issue which is underneath this, which is the authority of Scripture. They know we are going to subscribe to the authority of Scripture. It is in the 90 other dioceses domestically in the Episcopal Church that there is so much turmoil, attrition, hemorrhage. Many of our people in the non-network dioceses are just holding on by their fingernails. And the more that this House of Bishops could have said, the better they'd be able to hang on. The fact that we've said we're sorry -- that will be some encouragement to us and to the rest of the world. But it's actually not enough to hold our people, to stop this hemorrhage.

The issue is the network dioceses and the network bishops -- we've all said we are standing where the Episcopal Church has always stood. We are functioning under the constitution of the Episcopal Church. We are not going anywhere. The problem in the non-network dioceses for folks who are kind of biblically ordered people, or at least trying to live that way -- we're all sinners -- the problem for them is in their dioceses, it appears that their dioceses and their leadership often are going to a totally new place, and they feel embarrassed, they feel guilty, they feel corrupted by remaining part of the Episcopal Church in those dioceses. That's what the problem is.

The question of bishops visiting across diocesan boundaries is, in fact, one of the things the Lambeth Commission hopes will cease in the Communion. But those who are doing the visiting across the boundaries, our foreign allies, particularly the great strongholds of the Anglican Communion in South America, in Asia, and particularly in Africa, and those folks, they have heard the cry of our people here, and they have made it clear they are not going to stop until the Episcopal Church embraces the moratorium. They are going to do their best to hold on to those people. If we did it, it would break the laws of the Episcopal Church. What they are doing is reaching out to folks who need encouragement, and they have been among the very greatest factors in holding people in, in those non-network dioceses.

What we believe is that we're standing where the Episcopal Church has always stood. We're actually living the constitution. Its key points are that we will be constituent members of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion has said, "You can't do this, Episcopal Church." Now, we'll be part of the one holy catholic and apostolic church. We've had condemnation across the denominational spectrum of the action, so we're saying, "We are standing where the rest of the Christian church stands."

We're to uphold and propagate the historic faith and word. That's what our constitution says. Our position is upholding and propagating the historic faith and order. The other side is innovative, contrary to the historic faith and order. So what we're saying is we are going to stick this out, and the network dioceses can do that. Again, our polity is far more federal than the United States government, and we can stand pretty successfully as network dioceses, as 10 out of 100. We could stand and just say this is where we are, and the rest of the Communion can say, "You are the official Episcopalians." We have actually had that happen. Twenty-two of the 38 Anglican provinces have said they have either broken or are in impaired communion with the Episcopal Church in the United States.

In November, at the all-Africa bishops' conference in Lagos, a gathering of 300 bishops from all of Africa --12 provinces were present -- they actually said, "We recognize that our only partners in North America are the network," and they actually treated me as though I were the leader of the American church.

[b]Bishop Salmon:[/b]

If a congregation here in the U.S. in any church decided they didn't like what was going on, they would separate. We are a part of a national church which is a part of an international church, and so when you talk about separating, it doesn't fit in that context. In other words, our connection is not only to the American church but it is to the whole Communion. So when we talk about not going anywhere, the reason we can talk about that is because it is the kind of relationship where you are not leaving anything. In other words, we are loyal members of the Episcopal Church, and we stand on the faith that we have received, and also we are loyal members of the Anglican Communion. And so we have a double relationship rather than a singular one.

You see, the future of our organization is that our organization is a part of the Episcopal Church, and so we are not talking about two separate organizations. What we are really talking about is how does all this work out, and I don't think anybody knows how all this works out, and what we saw here, as Bishop Duncan said, was that at this meeting there was some progress in terms of the American church; positions were taken that he didn't think would be taken. We can't predict the work of the Holy Spirit. What we can say is that our call is to be faithful as we understand it, and then let that all work out. I think Americans have a tendency to try to figure out: "Well, something's going to happen today, and we'd like you to figure out when that is going to happen." And I don't think that fits what we're talking about.

[b]Bishop Duncan:[/b]

For the church, often these major battles reaffirm what the Revelations always said. The fourth century -- most of that century, the one whose position the church came to hold, Athanasius, was in a tiny minority against the Arian majority, and it took a whole century for the church to come back to its senses. We're going to take as long as it takes for the church to come back to its senses, for it to be reformed and realigned according to what it's always believed.

[b]Bishop Salmon:[/b]

I think that there was an attitudinal change among a number of people who said, "We do not like what has happened to us and the Communion, and we want to keep the bonds of the Communion," and that came from people who would be in positions exactly opposite where Bishop Duncan and I would be, who would have voted on the other side. I think that what has happened is that in this space of time, the travail we have gone through has had an effect on people. I think when a number of people in that room said, "We are deeply sorry for what has happened and how this has affected the whole Communion," there were people on all sides of the spectrum who meant that. I think there was progress there. How that is going to work out, I don't think anybody knows. But it certainly was different from any House [of Bishops] meeting that I have attended before.

[b]Bishop Duncan:[/b]

I think there was one other piece of progress relationally. In terms of the life within the Episcopal Church, I was able to speak to the House at the end of the debate this morning about what I call the politics of power and the language of grace. The Episcopal Church is always saying the right things, but the way we behave with one another is pure power politics. What was heard this morning -- and the response to what I said was a pretty clear indication of it -- was the minority saying the way we are dealt with by the Episcopal Church is simply a way of power politics. They have the power to put us out. While we're not leaving, they can still put us out. But what I think they are beginning to see is that to put us out is actually to commit suicide and to destroy their future, because we represent the whole energy of the Anglican Communion in terms of how Anglicism is growing worldwide -- Africa, Asia, Latin America -- and we represent in this country the church planters, the missionaries, the folks who are in most cases the really gifted leaders who are building the Episcopal Church. So put us out [and] you've actually put away your future. I think they heard that.

[b]Bishop Salmon:[/b]

I think that in terms of where we struggle as a church -- Gene Robinson was in my group last time and was in my group this time, and I told him the story that we had had a gathering of over 600 teenagers north of Columbia some months ago, and one of the 16-year-olds asked me in the meeting, "Bishop, what is the church's teaching about human sexuality and behavior?" and I said to him it has not changed. Our belief is that sexual expression is in the context of holy matrimony between a man and a woman. And the young man said to me, "Bishop, with all due respect, teenagers believe that behavior is the bottom line, and we believe that the church has changed its teaching because of what it allowed in that consecration." That was a stunning thing for a 16-year-old to say, and I think what we're talking about is, that my objection when I talked to Gene Robinson was, that here was a person who is divorced and who is in a relationship that is not holy matrimony, and we consecrated on the front end a person in the office of bishop, and that raised all kinds of questions and called into question the moral teaching of the church. I don't know how else to put that.

[b]Bishop Duncan:[/b]

Absolutely, we lost on [a moratorium on same-sex blessings and the consecration of gay people] at this point. And, the Communion lost on that issue. And if the Communion continues to lose on that issue, the Episcopal Church will find itself outside of the Communion. We will find ourselves with the rest of the world. But we will have lost, too, because we will have lost in some measure the unity of this church -- not by our leaving, but by the majority here just submitting to the culture and trying to take the church in a direction the church can't go. It's not about God's love for all those people whether their affection is homosexual or heterosexual. It's about the church speaking the truth and giving people a freedom they can't have, just based on what we want to do or what we choose to do or what the culture finds useful.

[b]Bishop Salmon:[/b]

I think the question about loss is right on target. We lost at General Convention. In a sense, in this particular issue [of a moratorium] we lost. We don't believe that issue is over, but one of the things about the way we live is that behavior has a way of manifesting itself in forces over which we have no control. And eventually the chickens will come home to roost. How they come home to roost, nobody knows. But the primates are going to have to deal with our response, and we do have an opportunity when the House of Bishops meets in March to see what it means when the House of Bishops says we will engage the issue of moratorium at that point. If we lose again, then we will lose again and then that goes to the primates, and the primates will have to decide how to respond to that. In other words, it is a Communion issue. It is not simply an internal issue.

That statement about submission to the Windsor Report -- I asked for permission to speak to the House [of Bishops] and to let them know that, while we were pleased we had made some progress at this meeting at the House of Bishops, Bishop Howe of central Florida and I and a number of other bishops were asking our dioceses to endorse the Windsor Report as our official position, and that is what we were doing, and that's why I stood up and made that statement. Twenty bishops have signed it.

[b]Bishop Duncan:[/b]

What we're saying is that the American church was asked to submit to these things. The American church hasn't yet done that in this meeting. We are saying we are already ready to submit. And we are signaling that to the rest of the world we heard them -- the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the Diocese of South Carolina, the Diocese of Texas heard them; the Diocese of San Joaquin, the Diocese of Albany, the Diocese of Springfield -- all over the country there are bishops and dioceses who have heard it and are saying to the international community, "We will submit because it is right to submit."

[b]Bishop Salmon:[/b]

That statement was simply held up to the House of Bishops as the position taken by a number of bishops in the House, and we wanted them to know that on the front end. While the House itself was not willing to say, "We submit to the report as is," we wanted them to know that there were a number of us who did, and I think I wouldn't do any more with it than that.

When people talk about the issues we are dealing with now and then talk about slavery and then talk about the position of women and then raise this question [of homosexuality] with that, what it's implying is these are all questions of the same order. There is something about the issues around gay and lesbian people that are of that order, and what they would mean to me is that gay and lesbian people in the Western world have been mistreated historically in our life, in the life of the Western world. I mean, it's just a given. That's true. When we begin to look at how the church is trying to deal with this, what we're trying to do is, number one, acknowledge what needs to be acknowledged and at the same time not throw the baby out with the bathwater. And when we begin to look at the issue of sexuality, look at it in the context of the American culture. In the context of the American culture, we are a culture where sexuality is almost the obsession of this culture. Not only that. The ultimate value of the American culture is the self, my rights, my conscience, what I want.

I listened on the 23rd of August to a show that Oprah Winfrey had, and she was interviewing Cameron Diaz, and Cameron was saying, "I don't have a dog," and what she meant by that was that dogs were too much trouble. She had a cat. And then the conversation went to relationships, and Cameron said that she was not willing to make a long-term relationship with anybody -- I'm paraphrasing now -- that she only went this way one time and that she was not wiling to do that. And Oprah said, "How exciting; how revolutionary." And she said, "I'm not willing to make long-term commitments," and she said marriage was a wonderful institution in the past, but she said, "We are emerging as a new species, and I'm not willing to make a commitment for 10 years or 30 years." What that says is that there is a new value there, and that new value is the self, and what is acceptable and what is right is what I want. Now the church has had some clear teaching about human sexuality, and we do need to look at all the issues around it, but I think what we are struggling with is an issue much larger than the gay and lesbian issue. If you look at television today, people live together at just the drop of a hat. They "unlive" together at the drop of a hat. And people are there for each other's use. I think the church needs to look at the whole issue of human sexuality. When we talk about what is moral and what is a salvation issue, what we want to look at is, how do gay and lesbian issues fit into that? Is same-sex the same thing as male-female relationship? Our teaching has been no, it is not. What we've tried to do is settle the issue by saying that gay and lesbian relationships are the same thing as holy matrimony, and I don't believe that is the solution to the problem. We do need to engage it, there's no doubt about that, but I think we live in a culture where the self is supreme, and whatever the self wants is what we need to do. And the church needs to challenge that and at the same time have a moral system that blesses everybody's life.

[b]Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold:[/b]

We've just concluded a meeting of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, and the purpose of this meeting was to begin to receive what is known as the Windsor Report. And the conversation was very extensive and very deep and very honest, and I think what we realized was that the Windsor Report presents a number of what I call "invitations," not just simply for the Episcopal Church but for different provinces of the Anglican Communion, to explore more deeply what it means to live a relationship of communion in various contexts in which cultures are quite different, in such a way that we can be one in a mission which we all share, which is making the reconciling love of Christ known in places where there is disease, poverty, war, famine, and all the other things that work against the building up of the human community.

The Windsor Report calls for a number of responses, particularly on the part of the Episcopal Church, that would involve very careful thought and clearly would involve the coming together of very different points of view. And so what we realized, in this very short space of time that we were here, was that we needed to take much more time to explore deeply some of the implications for the Episcopal Church, and that we intend to do when we meet in March for our regular spring meeting outside of Houston.

I think the essential message that I will take with me when I meet with the primates is that the Episcopal Church deeply values its membership in the Anglican Communion, that it wants in every way to strengthen the bonds of human affection which have been strained in recent times, and that it is eager and ready to enter into dialogue with parts of the Anglican world but also realizes that there is a certain quality of being American that is problematic in other parts of the world in terms of many aspects of how we present ourselves, not simply ecclesiastically but politically. And so all those things come to bear on how we are perceived, and it is my hope that when I go to the primates' meeting I can explore with them some of these larger issues that make it clear that the Episcopal Church has no desire to be a law unto itself and has every desire to work collegially and collaboratively with other parts of the Anglican Communion for the sake of the world.

I think it's fair to say that the United States has a somewhat unilateral way of looking at things. We make decisions often without fully considering implications elsewhere, and I think the Episcopal Church, given its resources, has in some ways not fully taken into account the sensibilities of other parts of the world, nor has it fully appreciated some of the differences that exist across the Communion. I think often Americans tend to see whatever patterns we have as normative, when in fact our culture is just as limited as any other culture, and we need to be more humble in how we approach others. And humility is one of the notes that the bishops struck both in their conversation and in the Word to the Church that they released at the end of our meeting.

There are deeply held divergent points of view within the Episcopal Church, and other denominations as well. I quickly add that other denominations are also dealing with questions of sexuality, and I think part of the reason we want to take more time when we meet in March is because we realize that we need to explore the whole question much more deeply. The [Windsor] Report is highly nuanced and its implications are far-reaching, and whether or not we can come to a common mind remains to be seen. But certainly that is a work ahead of us that we all, regardless of our points of view, are eager to engage in.

One of the uniquenesses of the church is that often we find that our unity is not a unity of mind, but a unity of heart. And it is amazing the degree to which strongly held divergent points of view can coexist within one body, and I think possibly the invitation is to live a both/and life rather than an either/or life. And that, I think, is what we are trying to explore with the integrity of multiple points of view.

With God all things are possible, and if I weren't a person of hope and didn't trust the divine imagination to transcend some of the limits of our own logic, I don't think I could really be a bishop.

[b]Bishop Mark Sisk, Diocese of New York:[/b]

This was a remarkably good meeting, I believe. We had a wide range of the bishops there. We had intense participation. It was a meeting where feelings of the heart were shared and respected. It was, in my experience, one of the most thoughtful meetings that we have had. There was no acrimony. There was clarity of point of view. There was a respect for the very wide range of perspectives that are held. There was a grappling with the realities of our Communion and the international nature of our Communion. I think that there is an extent to which we are growing into a deeper awareness of what it is to be an international Communion. It is something we have given expression to but, I think, have not grappled with in the depths that we are grappling with it now. I came away from this meeting with great hope for the future, not that we are going to move toward agreement, but recognize that there are bonds of affection that draw us together in a Communion, in a community, in a family that do not depend upon agreement in even sometimes important issues. So I felt very optimistic about the outcome of this meeting, and I look forward to the hard work that's going to take place in the future.

I would say that a community must be able to embrace disagreement,and even disagreement on serious issues, if they're to have a vital life that is going to be comprehensive in a world that is as different as the world in which we find ourselves.

The Episcopal Church is itself -- it's not simply that the Communion is broad in its perspectives -- the Episcopal Church itself shares that breadth; that it's as we live together, as we work together, as we pray together, as we trust each other that life is lived.

[b]Bishop Griswold:[/b]

I think it's worth noting that the Anglican tradition historically has always been one in which passionately held contrary points of view have been able to be reconciled, not in some formula but in common prayer and at the altar. And I think that the fact that the Episcopal Church has lived with multiple points of view on any number of concerns over the years -- we survived the Civil War without falling to pieces, and that was a very divisive moment in our history -- [is] because there is an overarching sense that it is in common prayer that we find our unity, not necessarily in one point of view.

[b]Bishop Charles Jenkins, Diocese of Louisiana:[/b]

I leave feeling hopeful. I've seen a great deal of movement on the part of our bishops toward one another. I believe it's absolutely essential for us as Christians to realize that if we're going to communicate with one another we need to be moving toward one another, and people who had well-established, well-thought-out positions have in fact been willing to look beyond their position and to try to hear what the other is saying, and I think to move at least emotionally at this point to embrace one another and to embrace one another's position. I think that's a sign of contradiction and a very positive contribution for the Episcopal Church to our worldwide community, to the nation, and to a regressed society in general. So I leave hopeful and optimistic.

[b]Bishop Griswold:[/b]

The meals were in common. I wasn't necessarily at all the meals because I had other things to attend to, but my sense is that people were there. They certainly shared in common prayer. I do know that some of the bishops had a press conference at about the time we had the Eucharist this morning, so I have to say that there are times when people absent themselves because of other commitments, but not all the bishops who might have chosen to absent themselves did absent themselves. It was a sort of random thing, and I would say by and large the bishops of varying points of view did share in the common life of the last few days.

[b]Bishop Jenkins:[/b]

The spirit of community was strengthened, and I think that the willingness to sacrifice for the other and to seek a way to embrace the other was very evident in this meeting.

[b]Bishop Griswold:[/b]

Historically there have been many networks within the Episcopal Church. When I was growing up, there was a network called the American Church Union which was sort of the Anglo-Catholic wing of the church. There are various networks focused around common views of social responsibility. So the church has historically known networks of like-minded people who support one another around a particular agenda, so the presence of a network is not something unusual. I think that when people find themselves in positions where they need the support of others who share those positions and form associations in which to support one another, that is part of the life of the church and always has been.

I certainly believe that the overwhelming majority of bishops, and extending that to the clergy and laypeople as well, want to stay together within the life of the church. And I think the reality of the church is what I call the diverse center -- people who hold varying points of view but have an overarching sense of we are members of Christ's risen body, like it or not, not just for our own comfort, but for the sake of the world. And so that sense of common mission and a common rootedness, I think, is the overwhelming reality of most Episcopalians, lay or clergy.

[b]Bishop Jenkins:[/b]

Once when I was a parish priest there was an issue that threatened the unity of the parish, and I was a frightened young priest and I went to see some of the old matriarchs and patriarchs of the congregation, and they calmed me down, saying, "We may agree or we may disagree, but this is our church, so you relax and be our priest." And I think that is the case for most Episcopalians throughout the country today. I would also say that this meeting was marked by an act of repentance on the part of the bishops of this church, and that should be a sign of hope to the world. We have expressed our need for forgiveness and have asked for that forgiveness. We have expressed our regret. So, indeed, I think that the maturity, the spiritual maturity that we are attempting to model in this House [of Bishops] and to demonstrate in this House bodes well for the unity of the church.

We are repenting for the hurt that we have caused one another. We are repenting, and we are expressing our sorrow for the breach of the bonds of affection that certain actions of our church have caused. And we are also saying to our brothers and sisters around the world that what you think is important, "You are important to us, and we want to learn from you, listen to you, and hear from you, because you have an experience of the love of Christ in very difficult circumstances that sometimes we don't have."

[b]Bishop Griswold:[/b]

I think the regret that we can offer wholeheartedly and as a unified body is regret for the consequences our actions have had in other contexts, but that does not mean that we necessarily regret the action itself. Certainly, I, having participated in the ordination of the Bishop of New Hampshire, do not regret having done so, though I recognize the complexities that that action has had in other places and regret the pain that it has caused other people.

[b]Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Diocese of Nevada:[/b]

I think this meeting exhibited a continued graciousness and growth in intimacy and therefore in community. Beginning in Spokane, this House has functioned in a different way. We have been more honest with each other. We have been willing to name hard realities and hard differences. And the very willingness to identify our gut-level issues is what helps us to befriend each other more effectively.

We honestly engaged issues that are global. We did it in a context of paying attention to the needs of the larger world and not just within our own church. We heard stories over the two-and-a-half days of engagement across the Communion, of relationships that have grown and deepened over the years and that continue to be of vital importance to who we are, that are simply a reminder to all of us that communion is of vast importance. We love our neighbors in the Communion, and we are going to work very hard to maintain those relationships.

The gospel is about freedom. We are meant to love each other in whatever condition we come. When we are able to get beyond the boundaries that limit our ability to relate to one another, that is when we find God most present. It's not easy; it feels like crucifixion at times for many of us, but that is the direction in which we find the Spirit leading us.

[b]Bishop Griswold:[/b]

The Communion is not as monochromatic as one might think when we look at the different parts of the Communion. Certain parts of the Communion live realities rather similar to our own, but in a less public way. Part of the American character is to put things out into the open, and there are cultures in which there is acknowledgment of certain realities, but those realities are not brought forward in a public way. It would be inaccurate to say that the whole question of homosexuality in the life of the church is solely a United States problem. Certainly it exists in other provinces of the Anglican Communion, though the willingness to speak about it openly is less present, and therefore homosexual persons are more reluctant to identify themselves that way. And indeed, there are provinces of the Anglican Communion where there has been hardly any conversation about sexuality. HIV/AIDS has created the need for that kind of conversation, so you have parts of the Anglican world where sexuality is off the screen, and how on earth a community that didn't discuss sexuality could move to something as complicated as homosexuality is very difficult to see. Part of what we are appreciating here is the uniqueness of a worldwide body that is embodied culturally in such different ways. Part of the primates' continuing conversation is how can we more deeply appreciate the contexts in which we're seeking to be faithful to the same gospel, but may be responding in different ways. As one primate from the developing world said to me, "The Holy Spirit can do different things in different places." I think it's perfectly true that one's response to certain cultural realities in one place in terms of how you interpret the gospel may in fact be different from how you do it somewhere else. So while we may be in some ways in a place quite different from the majority of the Anglican Communion, I think the issues we are dealing with are not unique to our own church, and certainly part of what we've said in our letter is, are there ways in which our experience of the last 30 years or so of openly exploring what homosexuality means in the life of the church and listening to homosexual persons, gay and lesbian persons, expressing their experience of the gospel -- is there some way that this can be a gift to the Communion and not a threat? That's certainly a part of what I will be taking to the primates' meeting.

[b]Bishop Jefferts Schori:[/b]

I think we have discovered as well that the bridges are built through mission efforts, and differences of theological opinion wane in importance when we are engaged in the mission work of the gospel. When people are dying of hunger, when people are dying of AIDS, those are more immediate and pressing responses that are called for than sorting out our theological differences.

[b]Bishop Griswold:[/b]

Absolutely, and again I think of a primates' meeting not too long ago, at the end of which several primates said, "You know, our issues are disease, poverty, civil strife. We are not focused on questions of sexuality. That is not our dominant concern. We are focused on matters of life and death." And in a sense, the Western world has imposed this agenda on an Anglican Communion that would far rather be focused on some of these life-and-death issues.

I think the Bible, which we all recognize as foundational and the ultimate reference point as we decide matters of faith, is subject, as the Windsor Report makes very clear, to a variety of interpretations. I think, for instance, our notions of how the cosmos works have certainly changed since the time the Bible was written, or our understandings of the origins of diseases have changed tremendously since the times of the Bible. We're accustomed to discovering new things about the mystery of human life, and why can't we say that we can also discover new things about that dimension of human existence that we call sexuality? I think it's clear that the biblical writers had no notion of people being intrinsically ordered to same-sex patterns of affection. There is the assumption, and Paul certainly makes it, that everyone is fundamentally heterosexual, and therefore any homosexual patterns are deviant because they are consciously undertaken, because everyone is naturally heterosexual. Well, we know that homosexual orientation in many people is very, very profound. It's not a question of some free choice. It seems to be part of the structure of who they are. And so if we can see variations in sexuality as in some way intrinsic to who people are, then the question of the application of certain texts from Scripture, which are built upon a different understanding of the human person, are less significant in how we then deal with the question of homosexuality.

I look at something like divorce. Jesus is very clear about divorce and remarriage only in cases of what is termed in modern translations "unchastity." Again, we have understood now the complexities of human relationships, that simply enduring one another is not necessarily life-giving. We understand psychology quite differently. And so the church and many of those who are terribly upset in this area of homosexuality would be perfectly comfortable with a church that allows remarriage after divorce and would say, in terms of Scripture, "We understand so much more about human reality that we can modify the actual word of Scripture."

So I think there is no question of devaluing Scripture; I think it's a question of accepting the fact that Scripture doesn't presuppose every eventuality, nor does it transcend being in some ways historically limited by those who wrote the words -- their worldview, their understanding of human reality. Jesus in the Gospel of John says, "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; however, the spirit of truth will come and will draw from what is mine and reveal it to you." So it is clear as I read the Bible that truth is an unfolding reality and is not simply fixed or circumscribed at a particular moment or by the pages of Scripture itself. The Holy Spirit can transcend the words that the Holy Spirit has inspired and lead us to new understandings and new appreciations.